By International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International
28 June is Pride Day for sex-affective and gender dissidents. Stonewall’s uprising in the United States marked the emergence of the modern dissidence movement.
On that date, but in 1969, an uprising of trans, transgender, lesbians and gays, mainly Latino and black, marginalised, poor, homeless, and sex workers, took place in New York. It was in response to a police raid on the Stonewall Inn. For three nights, hundreds took to the streets to fight against the criminalisation and persecution of police edicts, the existing sexual order, church-imposed monogamy, and the pathologisation of sexual orientations and dissident gender identities; it was the spearhead of the movement. The events had international repercussions, and as a result, the first Pride Parades were organised, recognising that date as International Pride Day.
As a result, the dissidence movement took the lead. The democratic struggle for access to fundamental rights such as marriage, gender identity, formal jobs, access to health care, etc., are the historical flags of the movement. But the struggle against the capitalist and patriarchal system is more relevant. Discrimination against and expulsion in schools, homes, workplaces, in public, and the precarious economic conditions, go hand in hand with hate crimes: corrective violence that ends in abuse, rape or death.
The capitalist crisis has worsened these scourges. Some reactionary governments promote policies of discrimination and social marginalisation. The so-called progressive governments give in to pressure and grant rights conquered by the mobilisation. These are still insufficient to guarantee a dignified and full life for dissident genders. Also, the capitalist-imperialist system, mounted on the movement, tries to capture it for consumption and profit generation: by helping to visualise it, the deep struggle of the movement is completely washed away. Year after year, we see how the political, social and class content of our demands is erased, under the well-known “pinkwashing” and “rainbow capitalism”.
It is necessary to recover the movement’s tradition of struggle, which all over the world has been part of the workers’ and popular revolts as it happened in Chile or Colombia, in the great mobilisations against racism in the United States, in the green tide that won the right to abortion in Argentina; We are an active and conscious part of the feminist movement (of which we dissident genders have always been a part and in this fourth wave we are increasingly recognised), the anti-racist movement, the environmental movement, and the working class struggles against the policies of austerity, plunder and hunger all over the world.
During the pandemic, the crisis hit the collective hard. The quarantines to prevent the spread of covid19 aggravated the conditions of precariousness and misery to which governments subject us. Today we continue with precarious jobs and unemployment, combined with the discrimination we suffer in all spheres because of our sex-affective orientations and gender identities. In Argentina, it has been over a year since Tehuel, a young trans woman who left for a false job interview, disappeared. In Chile, Estefano, a young transgender person who killed his aggressor in self-defence in the context of a transgender attack, is still in jail. In Spain, as a result of the struggle and street mobilisation of the community, the law “for the Real and Effective Equality of Trans People and the Guarantee of the Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Trans, Bisexual and Intersex People” has just been passed. It is still much to be done.
Fifty-three years after the Stonewall revolt, dissident genders organise against all governments and their repressive and discriminatory policies. In the IWU-FI, we make an internationalist call for the unity and organisation of dissident genders, the feminist movement and all oppressed people within the working class. To destroy the capitalist and heteropatriarchal system, achieve true sexual and gender liberation, and live in a world without exploitation and oppression.
Let’s continue on the streets, to demand:
Enough of government and IMF austerity measures.
Enough of transvesticides, transfemicides, trans homicides and hate crimes.
The immediate appearance of Tehuel.
Release and acquittal for Estefano, defending oneself is not a crime!
No more criminalisation of our identities, no more police repression!
For a government of the working class, the youth, women and gender dissidence!
